March 2, 1860
On this day, Susanna Madora Salter, was born, the first woman in America to be elected to public office. Nominated for mayor as a joke by the men of Argonia, Kansas, the women of the town got the last laugh.
Descended from William Penn’s original Quaker colonists, she arrived in Kansas with her family in 1872. The Kinsey’s settled on 80 acres not far 
from Topeka. Apparently an only child, “Dora” attended Kansas State Agricultural College, now K-State University. She met and married fellow student, Lewis Salter, the son of the Kansas Lieutenant Governor. (Left, the Salters)
The town of Argonia was just seven years old when Salter became mayor in 1887. The ink was barely dry on the Kansas law that allowed women to vote in municipal elections.
The jokesters who nominated Salter behind closed doors believed she would receive such a shalacking at the polls that would discourage other women from seeking office. Never mind Salter’s husband had served as city clerk and her father, Oliver Kinsey, was the town’s first mayor. It was her membership in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union that vexed them and prompted the prank.
The nomination was a surprise to everyone, including the candidate. Names of nominees were not revealed until the morning of the election. But when local WCTU members heard the news, a delegation was dispatched to find out if, in fact, she would serve. “Yes,” she said, becoming the preferred 
candidate for the WCTU and the Republicans. She won with a two-thirds majority.
Wyoming and Utah had enfranchised women nearly two decades earlier. Louisa Swain (left) cast a ballot in the general election in Laramie, Wyoming, back in 1870. But Salter’s election as the first female mayor made headlines across the country. A reporter from New York who took the train to Kansas for her first City Council meeting described her dress and her hat and declared that she presided with decorum.
Perhaps the biggest controversy during her tenure – the license fee for billiard tables. Billiard parlor owners argued the $24 fee was “unsustainable” and sought to have it reduced to $12.50. Her Honor commented that she didn’t think the town needed any more billiard tables and her position was supported by two councilmen.
At the end of the one-year term, she chose not to seek reelection and retired from elective politics. Her civic career, however brief, turned out to be consequential. A number of other Kansas communities elected female mayors the next year. She received accolades from temperance and suffrage groups and was credited with raising the moral tone of the community, evidenced perhaps by the fact the town’s billiard hall closed down.
Not all the attention was positive. Critics wondered who was taking care of the domestic chores she was neglecting by her weighty responsibilities. At just 27, could she cope with the stress? Argonia received another windfall 
of public attention when it was learned Salter had given birth to her fifth child while in office.
Salter’s election was at the intersection of the growing temperance movement and women’s suffrage, both born from the remnants of the abolitionists. The previous year, reformer Frances Willard, (right) president of the International WCTU, submitted petitions to Congress signed by 200,000 members favoring women’s sufferage.
From left, Stanton, Anthony and Stone
Powerhouse suffragists, Eliza Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had also merged their National Women Suffrage Association with the American Women Suffrage Association, founded by Lucy Stone.
In contrast to Salter’s restrained municipal administration and suffrage organizations lofty appeals to Congress, firebrand Carrie Nation (below) was just warming up in Medicine Lodge, Kansas. She’d founded a local WCTU 
chapter there and campaigned to enforce laws banning the sale of liquor in the state. Ten years later, fearing her efforts were not yielding results, she took a more active approach, going after the “gin parlors” with a hatchet.
Jailed more than 30 times, her hatchet made her famous but was less widely known for her humanitarian efforts. Believing alcohol abuse was a social rather than a legal problem, Nation ministered to prisoners and the poor. With the proceeds from the sale of her house in Medicine Lodge, in 1901 she founded what was the first battered women’s shelter in Kansas City.
A Wichita, Kansas, bar laid waste by Carrie Nation
Carrie Nation died in Leavenworth, Kansas, a decade later at a 64 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Belton, Missouri. Declaring her “Faithful to the Cause of Prohibition,” the WCTU later erected a marker. And in 1976 the house she sold in Medicine Lodge was named a National Historic Landmark.
Ex-mayor Salter and her husband remained in Argonia until 1893 before decamping 75 miles south into Oklahoma Territory. After Lewis died in 1916, she moved to Norman, Oklahoma, where her children could attend college. She died March 17, 1961, 15 days after her birthday at the age of 101.
New York City suffrage march in 1917
Most of America’s women waited another 33 years after Susanna Madora Salter was sworn in as mayor of Argonia to win the right to vote. Universal suffrage finally passed in 1920.
Salter House Museum, 211 West Garfield, Argonia, Kansas, reopened two years ago after extensive renovation. The two-story red brick house was built in 1874 by Oliver Kinsey, Salter’s father and the town’s first mayor. About an hour southwest of Wichita, the museum is home to memorabilia and history of the country’s first female mayor and the WCTU as well as restored furnishings of the period. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The museum is not open daily but can be toured by appointment and available for special events. For information call (620) 435-617. Susanna Madora and Lewis Salter are buried in the Argonia Cemetery just a few blocks away.
© Text Only – 2020 – Headin’ West LLC – All photos – public domain or fair use.
*Head On West strives for historic accuracy and uses a number of sources considered reliable. When research differs on significant facts, the various points of view will be cited.